Almost There
by OnceUponABookworm
Summary: Captain Swan. Set after NY City Serenade, on the way back to Storybrooke after Emma remembers everything. A bit of internal monologue on her part and as always an infuriatingly attractive and saucy pirate meddling with her feelings.


Almost There

...

 **A/N: Found this in my drafts and thought I should finish and post it, seeing as how I've been absent from this site for so long. I know it's set a whiiiile back in the show, but rest assured I have seen Season 4 and some more fic to help with the hiatus will be coming soon. Nonetheless, I hope you enjoy. Please don't forget to review, favorite, or follow if you want!**

Emma yawned, steering slowly on the road, trees illuminated briefly by the headlights of the Beetle on either side. The blanket of night thickly kept its hold on them, and the empty road made things all the more eery. The beams of the headlights were the only things permeating the darkness, and Emma shivered involuntarily as a memory came to her of another day where she was driving in the dark, with a seven year-old Henry in the car. It was winter, and the ground was slick with a thin layer of ice as it snowed. She could recall the huge truck clearly, spiraling out of control and her fighting brutally to turn the Beetle away in time, hearing Henry screaming . . . but wait. None of that actually happened. She gave up Henry when he was an infant, and all that was false. All the times he brought home animals he found in the park with his friends begging to keep them, every time she helped him with homework, every tantrum soothed, every diaper changed, every bedtime story read, every Scrabble round lost, every Sorry round won, every day she stood by the bus stop watching him get in and leave for school, everything…. was all a lie. A lie she had lived under for a year thinking was reality and never once questioning it. Or that she denied couldn't be real. Until someone she assumed to be an overly enthusiastic, way-too-attractive, drunk pirate cosplayer showed up at her door and planted one on her. Sighing, Emma began flipping through the radio stations. Really heavy metal. _No thanks._ Justin Bieber's latest hit. _Not a belieber._ Classic rock. _Not in the mood._ Talk show? _Never._ Finally she just gave up and turned the thing off, greeting by silence broken only by the even breathing of sleep. Briefly looking behind her she saw Henry asleep in the backseat, head on his hands eyes flickering behind their lids.

She just knew he was dreaming of valiant knights and selfless princesses, dragons and steeds. Smiling softly, she reached forward and tousled his hair, letting her fingers ghost along the soft brown locks before turning to look at the other passenger of the car. Hook was sound asleep, head tilted to the side of his shoulder and away from her so she could see his jawline and neck clearly, where his ever-present stubble looked black in the night. Tentatively she reached her fingers out and brushed the side of his face, just making sure he was real. That she wasn't going crazy. That the last 12 years, the _real_ last 12 years, had actually happened. She'd actually met her parents, found her son, found his father, killed a dragon, outwitted a giant, used magic, and broken a curse. It seemed so hard to believe that the life she'd had, the one she'd been happy with, was the false one. But then again, had she really been all that happy? She had Henry, and of course raising and being with him every day gave her joy she'd never imagined when she let him get adopted.

Yet Emma just couldn't ever deny that niggling feeling, that strange and small but incredibly persistent ache inside her chest. It was like a crack, a missing piece she was so used to it hardly bothered her. But it was always there, and she knew that subconsciously she found herself trying to fill it. Walsh helped, or at least she thought he did. When she was with him, and he was telling corny jokes and looking at her with that gleam in his shrewd eyes, she'd laugh along and kiss and smile, and it would feel like the crack was full. But then later she'd lie awake in bed, letting her vision swim and eyes water as she stared unblinkingly at the ceiling, trying to grasp something tantalizingly close but maddeningly out of reach, like a word you'd been saying since before you could walk straight but that somehow you suddenly forgot. And then she would fall asleep, to swirling pools of cerulean in her dreams, and an intoxicating burn left on her lips, that she could never tell if it was left from alcohol or a kiss.

And now, as she drove steadily on into the night, she tried desperately to tell herself that that yearning was not for Hook, and that when her being swelled, if only for a moment, all aches forgotten when he kissed her at the door, it was only a fluke.

 _After all,_ she found herself thinking. _He's very hot, though I'll never tell him so. Who wouldn't want to kiss him?_ Before she knew what she was doing she was staring at the pirate so intently it was a wonder his skin didn't begin to singe, and only broke away with an awkward cough to cover it up when he suddenly shifted and began to open his eyes.

"Emma? What time is it?" His accented voice was thick and scratchy with sleep that surprised Emma so much she almost jumped, and out of the corner of her eye she could see his brow furrowed as he licked his lips. _Damnit Hook, why are you always licking your pink freakin' lips!?_

"Sometime around midnight," she shrugged, keeping her eyes locked on the road and away from him as a way to compensate for her previous staring. _Come on, Emma, you could've had an accident!_ She had to admit that wasn't very likely though. The road was as straight as a fence post, eerily even, and she hadn't seen another soul in over an hour. Coming to think of it, maybe they were lost. "Actually, I think we might have gotten lost," she voiced her concern, forcing herself to glance over at Killian when instead of a reply she heard a bunch of rustling. "What are you doing?"

"Navigating," he answered simply, ring-encrusted hand running over the contours of the map they'd bought at the last gas station.

"I already looked at the map, it's not any help."

"No offense darling, but you're no sailor. I'd wager I'm a mite more skilled at reading a map than you." Emma scoffed, though under his steady gaze she hadn't met in so long she could find no rebuttal.

"Whatever, we should've gotten a GPS anyway." Hook opened his mouth, about to speak, but Emma cut him off.

"It's a thing, I'm too tired to explain." Sighing, she turned back to the road and silence overtook the car again.

"I'm sorry." The sudden utterance took her by surprise, and Emma turned to Hook with a raised eyebrow.

"What for?"

"For taking you away from your life. You had a nice home, a job, Henry, a fiancee...granted, he was a flying monkey, but we all make mistakes." He tried to finish humorously, but the lightness in his tone felt forced.

"It's not your fault Hook."

"Of course," Hook scratched the back of his ear as he looked away and nodded, and Emma sighed. Gingerly, she reached out and grabbed his arm, her green eyes instantly met by blue as they snapped to her curiously.

"It's not your fault," she repeated more forcefully. "I would much rather be faced with an ugly truth than live a lie. You saved Henry, and you saved me."

"Oh trust me Swan, you don't need saving," Hook chuckled.

"Everyone needs saving at one point or another," Emma found herself admitting. "Besides, not everything before the curse was that bad."

"Hmm?" Hook raised a curious eyebrow, straightening against his seat. "Oh, do tell."

Emma sighed and rolled her eyes, but a secret smile tugged at the edges of her lips. "Well, Granny's has the best grilled cheese sandwiches and hot cocoa in the world. Can't believe I forgot that. And despite the fact that they're the same age as me, the fact that my parents have a once-in-a-lifetime kind of love is pretty cool. Although I suppose 'True Love' is a lot more common in their lives than in what I like to call the real world."

"I don't know about that," Hook smiled. "Maybe it's just that in your 'real world' people are so cynical they wouldn't know it if their True Love was staring them in the face." Emma felt a strange twist in her gut at that, and the strange way that Hook's eyes were on her, as if he could read her like an open book, made her fidget in her seat. Irritation sparked within her, and she felt herself shift into the defensive.

"What's that supposed to mean?" she snapped unnecessarily, and fought back a scowl when Hook drew back with a smirk, seeing he'd hit a nerve.

"Whatever you want it to mean, love," he shrugged. "We both know people only ever hear what they want to anyway." Emma narrowed her eyes and met his even gaze, feeling an electricity in the air that sent the hairs on her arm rising involuntarily. Hook leaned in until Emma could smell the rum on his breath, and her heart began to thud in her chest. With self-control she silently applauded herself for, she shrugged and turned back to the road, letting the moment pass. Although she couldn't help but become suddenly more aware of that ache in her chest, and how it shrunk ever so slightly when that damnable pirate smiled.

"Figure out where we are yet?" she asked.

"Oh don't worry love, we're almost there."


End file.
